Re: switching to Context

["Thomas A. Schmitz" <thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de>]

On Nov 29, 2007, at 1:17 PM, Roger Mason wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm thinking of making the switch from latex to context, indeed I'm
> working on my first non-trivial document as a trial.  I have some
> questions.
>
> (1) Is it possible to do conditional compilation?  I wish to use
> context to write lecture notes with embedded pictures.  I'd like to
> compile the document into one form to hand out to the class (or make
> available on the web) and another to be used as a presentation, much
> like latex-beamer, with just the pictures.

This is in fact quite easy with ConTeXt, you can use different modes.  
If you excuse the shameless plug, I wrote something in the PracTeX  
journal that may get you started:

http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-2/schmitz/

>
>
> (2) Is it possible to convert context into plain text (i.e. strip out
> the formatting instructions)?  This may seem eccentric but it might,
> with some programming, offer a means to put document content into a
> relational database, perhaps in paragraph chunks.
>

I'm not aware of anything like that, but you can always use a tool  
such as pdftotext (part of xpdf, whch is available on any reasonable  
platform) on the pdf files that ConTeXt creates.

HTH

Thomas
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive  : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________